


there is no heart for me like yours

by turtle_abyss



Series: IronStrange Bingo 2019 [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 04:19:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18652774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turtle_abyss/pseuds/turtle_abyss
Summary: Bingo Fill: AloneBeing able to feel your soulmate - a phantom touch, a bone-deep awareness - is a divine torture. To know, but not see. To seek, but not find. To feel someone holding your hand and not be able to hold theirs.





	there is no heart for me like yours

**Author's Note:**

> Bingo Fill: Alone  
> Not exactly MCU timeline compliant. Their timeline is a mess anyway though so who cares?  
> Enjoy!

Mama says that awareness at his back is his soulmate. She says his soulmate is the one person who is meant for him. Who will love him forever.

She says his soulmate will be his partner. In everything. That soulmates have the greatest love for each other. And the greatest ability to hurt each other.

Jarvis tells him that meeting your soulmate is like you didn’t realize the universe was just slightly out of alignment and then all of a sudden it _is._ Like when Tony finally got his first robot to work.

Tony thinks it sounds wonderful.

He knows it certainly _feels_ wonderful.

~~~~~~

Stephen has an imaginary friend. He can’t see them, but he knows they like to hold his hand.

Victor says it’s dumb.

Donna says it’s _romantic_.

His father tells him he’s too old for imaginary friends and to stop being such an idiot.

He tries, but that sensation of someone holding his hand never leaves.

He doesn’t want it to leave.

But he stops mentioning it.

It’s not until he overhears his mother telling Donna about soulmates that he understands.

It’s an odd concept.

But he kind of likes it.

There’s someone out there who won’t think he’s too annoying or too stupid or too smart.

~~~~~~

He’s adrift in a sea of people and he’s never felt so alone. Arms wrap around his waist from behind and he shivers as they squeeze tighter than the phantom sensation he’s used to.

He doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like to be touched by these people who only want him for his money or his fame or their own selfish pleasures.

He doesn’t want _them._ He only wants his soulmate.

And it’s such fucking _bullshit._

Magic _nonsense._

Just like dad said.

It’s nothing verified by science. Not a real guarantee that you’ll ever meet them _or_ that things will even work out.

Just a bunch of fairytale garbage.

He still ends up leaving the party, just drunk enough to have forgotten what had driven him out to party in the first place, and heads back to his dorm to huddle under his pile of blankets and code.

~~~~~~

He’s never going home again.

He buries himself in his studies, but it’s impossible to hide completely from how bitterly lonely he still feels. Even here, among those who are meant to be his peers.

But when he feels his worst, the awareness he has of his soulmate only seems to increase. A soothing warmth that presses against his chest or tucks under his chin or holds his hand with a gentleness he didn’t think could exist in the world.

He longs for them. He thinks it’s stupid, but he does anyway.

He doesn’t need them though.

He doesn’t need anyone.

~~~~~~

He feels so lost. The shattered remains of his life at his feet and the cold darkness of the cave wrapped around him. But there’s a warmth at the back of his awareness. A certainty. Like a hand holding his as he searches for a way out of the forest.

Yinsen asks him if he has anyone and Tony says nothing.

The silence speaks for itself.

It’s not like he’s ever going to meet his soulmate now.

It’s not like they would ever want him even if he did.

~~~~~~

Stephen practices writing his name. Over and over. It never gets any better. His hands are a disaster. He wants to scream.

There’s a phantom sensation of fingers trailing along the back of his hand.

That’s when he does scream.

And throw everything from the table.

He’s never hated this soulmate nonsense more.

A feeling that used to be a comfort now a _mockery._

Christine doesn’t deserve his rage or his agony, but she still gets it.

What is he without his hands?

 _Worthless_.

_Useless._

_Disgraced._

Who could ever want him now?

~~~~~~

He threw up a glass of champagne ten minutes ago.

Has to change his shirt.

He looks at his reflection in the window projection.

Poison claws through his veins and bleeds into his skin from the arc reactor.

 _89%_.

A ghost of a hand cards through his hair and cups his cheek.

“Guess this is the end for you and me, huh?” he murmurs, wishing he could lean into the touch. “Wish I could’ve met you.”

And then Natalie from Legal - who he can’t figure out because frankly his head is fuzzy and pounding and soon to crash _probably_ \- comes in and he hurries to button his shirt up.

When she agrees with him that he should cancel his birthday party ( _he doesn’t want to die surrounded by strangers who don’t even really like him_ ), he starts to feel like being contrary. Maybe that’ll trip her up. Maybe that’ll help him solve what’s been nagging him about her before he croaks.

She hands him more alcohol, though, and he wants to hurl but he still has to _pretendpretendpretend._

“If this was your last birthday party you were ever gonna have, how would you celebrate it?” he asks her, not knowing why he allows the slip. The vulnerability.

“I’d do whatever I wanted to do with whoever I wanted to do it with,” she answers and there’s a pull in his chest. An intense longing.

He wishes he could spend it with the person who holds him when the shower water hitting his face leaves him sitting on the bathroom floor for half an hour. Who runs their fingers through his hair when he wakes up screaming. Who kisses his hand when he makes something new and marvelous.

He doesn’t.

~~~~~~

Magic doesn’t have any more of an explanation for soulmates than science does.

They don’t even have any _ways_ to find soulmates. He’d thought that surely they would succeed where science had failed, but no.

It’s disappointing.

He’d gotten his hopes up after the first time he’d achieved his astral form and felt what were once phantom sensations as though they were real and solid.

He couldn’t help but laugh at himself now. All those years spent scorning soulmates and yet at the first opportunity he couldn’t help but think _maybe._

It’s fortunate that he’s able to manipulate books and such in his astral form. He has the excuse of studying to allow him to stay like that for as long as possible.

He’s become addicted to the feeling of his soulmate. What he now knows are calloused hands that are still incredibly gentle. Strong arms holding him instead of a nebulous sensation of being held. He’s always suspected they were shorter than him, but now he can feel hair tickle at his chin sometimes.

If only he had a face to picture as well.

It would be perfect.

~~~~~~

It feels like the universe was just cleaved in two. Like the world is tilting off its axis. Like the arc reactor is twisting. Like his heart is composed of shattered glass instead of flesh.

He thinks his soulmate just died.

There’s no thought in his head. No feeling. Or maybe too much feeling. He’s certain his body must be giving out.

There’s sunlight and then he’s laid out in the backseat of his car between one blink and the next. One awareness and the next. It’s like he’s blinking in and out of reality.

Beneath it all, fear and panic and grief begin to swell.

His breath starts to come short.

There are hands on him. Voices around him.

He can’t.

He can’t.

He thought, at the end of all the pain, there would be someone. Someone who made it all worth it.

He feels so alone.

The earth keeps sliding out from under his feet.

It feels like the world’s worst rollercoaster.

And just when he thinks he’s going to finally pass out for good, there’s a swell - gentle like a summer breeze - that seems to set him back on his feet. The world rights itself. Clarity starts to come back.

They’re back. They’re alive.

He starts sobbing.

 _'Please,’_ he prays as he’s moved to settle against a warm shoulder - limp and wrung out and exhausted, _‘Please be okay.'_

He starts to pick out Happy’s voice and then Pepper’s and Rhodey’s.

He doesn’t know how to tell them his tears are from relief.

~~~~~~

It feels like whole dimensions imploding. Like his soul being ripped from his body.

For a moment he thinks that’s what happened, but no. He knows this feeling.

The only difference is this time he’s not helpless.

Instead, he casts out for the source of the black hole that’s been punctured into his heart and _pulls._ He uses that feeling to direct a portal.

The first thing he feels that’s real is cold. Unbearable cold.

He thinks of Everest very briefly.

The place on the other side of his portal is very dark. The light from his portal glints off something a dark, bloody red and fear begins to tighten its grip. He hurries through and conjures a light and he’s very nearly rooted to the spot by the sight of armor. The Iron Man armor.

At the periphery of his attention, he takes vague notice of the scorch marks, the scores in the cement, an arm, a shield, and a half crushed helmet. But he falls to his knees before the figure crumpled against a support beam.

The armor is scratched up and dented in places. A horrifying cavern ripped into the chest plate. A beautiful face bruised with nearly as much exhaustion as blunt force trauma. Unfocused brown eyes blink up at him blearily and Tony Stark’s lips twitch up into the faintest of smiles.

“It’s you,” Tony breathes shakily, an expression like awe and relief and gratefulness breaking through bone-deep exhaustion and an ocean of grief. Blood bubbles from between his lips. His eyes close.

“No,” Stephen denies begs _pleads_ as his awareness of Tony - of his world - starts to strain at the edges. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me. I only just found you.”

He starts running scans with violently trembling hands even as he opens up a portal to the hospital he remembers possessing the best cardiothoracic surgeon he knew of.

_Shattered prosthetic sternum, broken ribs, multiple fractures along the left arm, blunt force trauma to the head._

Then he settles in an uncomfortable plastic chair for the longest wait of his life because _he can’t fix this._

And if he prays to every deity he’s ever read about? Well, that’s between himself and them.

He does though. He prays long and hard to keep from throwing his spirit from his body and observing this potentially life-shattering surgery. It won’t do him any good to know what they’re doing because there is nothing that _he_ can do. And he’ll know if it goes wrong anyway.

So he prays. And he feels that wonderful, beautiful, glorious awareness he’s always had of Tony - ‘ _Oh shit it’s Tony Stark. Tony Stark is my soulmate.’_ \- shift between shattered metacarpals and the hope he’d felt when Karl Mordo led him to the Ancient One at Kamar-Taj.

Nearly eleven hours later, he knows before a nurse comes to tell him that Tony will survive. They don’t give him details and they don’t let him see him - anyone could _claim_ to be Tony Stark’s newly discovered soulmate. It’s not official. Not yet.

Stephen knows this. Doesn’t mind.

He heads back to the Sanctum to shower and change into something that stands out less and settles into a restful meditation to center himself until he’s reasonably sure it’s safe to visit his soulmate.

His soulmate.

Just the thought nearly makes his heart trip over itself.

He’s found him.

~~~~~~

Tony awakens to an annoying beep, an uncomfortable pressure in his chest, and a presence he senses at his side.

It takes almost everything he has to open his eyes and turn his head just enough to see dark hair and intense blue eyes and cheekbones to die for.

God, he’d thought he was a desperate hallucination. One last comfort before the end. But he looks at this man who looks back at him with blatant relief and the world seems to clarify. The stars align. Lines get sharper, colors deepen, yet everything pales in comparison to this one human being in a world of seven billion.

It wasn’t a dream.

This was real.

He blinks and feels tears slide down his cheeks. He tries to smile and opens his mouth even though he doesn’t know what he’s going to say. It doesn’t matter in the end because one long trembling digit is placed over his lips. Blue eyes close and the man - _his soulmate_ \- shakes his head.

“Don’t try to talk,” he murmurs in a deep baritone. Tony wants to listen to that voice forever. Feels giddy when he realizes he might just get to. “You’re only just out of surgery and you won’t want to stress your chest in the least for a long while.”

 _‘Please tell me your name. Please,’_ Tony thinks desperately, trying to convey that raw desperation with just his eyes. He needs to know before the exhaustion pulls him back under.

The finger leaves his lips and slides over for one large, gentle hand to cup his cheek. Tony can’t help but try to press into its warmth and comfort.

“I’ve been waiting for you for so long,” the man murmurs brokenly. “I’m so very glad you’re alive.”

Tony’s eyes close against his will. He wants to keep staring into his companion soul.

“Sleep, my dear. I’ll stay with you for as long as I’m able and I’ll find you wherever you go. We’ll have time for the rest later."

“Your na-ame?” Tony rasps. The words so faint he’s not sure they’ve been heard. But he needs to know. He needs to know before he can allow himself to rest.

“It’s Stephen. Stephen Strange.” He feels Stephen’s hand reach up to stroke through his hair soothingly, then one of his hands is cradled securely and brought to warm chapped lips and kissed like it’s the most precious and fragile thing in the world.

His heart swells.

It’s him.

It’s definitely him.

**Author's Note:**

> I might add more to this later on, but right now I'm drawing a blank so no guarantees.


End file.
